Thursday, June 23, 2005

Got this from Joe.1) Total number of books I've owned: Like Joe, I assume this asks for all-time book ownership. And I get to thinking about Value Tales, The Great Brain and all those old Peanuts paperbacks. And college textbooks. I’ll say 700.

2) The last book(s) I bought:Grey Area by Will Self

3) The last book I read:What’s the Matter with Kansas by Thomas Frank

4) Five books that mean a lot to me (in no particular order):Franny and Zooey by Salinger; It Came From Memphis by Gordon; Lolita by Nabokov; The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Chabon; To the Lighthouse by Woolf

3) The last book I read: I'm in the middle of The Old Ballgame, by Frank DeFord, about turn of the 20th century NY Giants manager John McGraw and his star pitcher Christy Mathewson.

4) Five books that mean a lot to me (in no particular order): The Years, Virginia Woolf; The Horse's Mouth/Herself Surprised/To Be a Pilgrim, Joyce Cary; The Waves, Virginia Woolf; Ulysses, James Joyce; When It Was a Game (I think that's the title - it's an oral history of early 20th century baseball by then very old players from that time in the mid-60s).

1) Total number of books I've owned: No clue, but definitely more than 1000.

2) Last book I bought: Heart of Darkness/The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad (hadn't read it since 9th grade, but I found it for a buck at the Punk Rock Flea Market).

3) Last book I read: The Crying of Lot 49 by Pynchon

4) Five books the mean a lot to me (in no particular order): Underworld by DeLillo, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Eggers, Tropic of Capricorn by Miller, The Corrections by Franzen, and A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.